The Memory of Trees
by wryter501
Summary: Arthur would rise again, when he was needed. How long? It didn't matter. Merlin waited. "So many were slaughtered waiting for Emrys. I know you know how that feels. Waiting. While people die. I curse you, Emrys, do you hear me? To an eternity of useless tormented waiting!" Then in one moment, she put forth the charm... Post-series canon, ref. Tennyson's "Merlin and Vivien."
1. Chapter 1

**The Memory of Trees**

_A storm was coming, but the winds were still.(1)_

_ Time ceased to have any meaning. Existence was swallowed up in the blackness of waiting._

_ It began immediately, involuntarily, the moment that Arthur's funeral ship vanished from his sight in the mist rising from the water._

_ Once and future. Future. How long? It didn't matter. He waited._

_ Percival found him on the grass, hugging his knees to his chest, dry-eyed and calm. Waiting. He was aware of the biggest knight addressing him, crouching next to him, speaking gentle and slow, a worried wrinkle between his brows. He was aware that Percival sat next to him on the grass for some time – it didn't matter how long – before speaking again._

_ Camelot, he heard._

_ Yes, Camelot. He protected Camelot for Arthur, they both protected Camelot, he loved Camelot for itself – the idea the people the home the friends – and for Arthur's sake._

_ It made sense, he supposed, to wait in Camelot. Arthur, when he returned, would be pleased to find him there. The king's last order – I don't want you to change. I want you always to be you._

_ So he went with Percival, back to Camelot. He didn't know how long it took them, it didn't matter. In the great courtyard, filled with people curious busy hopeful tearful and yet so empty, he met his friends._

_ The queen. The court physician. The knight._

_ There were tears on their faces, as they came down the stairs – Gwen in a rush of lavender color and scent, Gaius stiffer slower, Leon grave and sedate. He was aware of arms around him – his own were so empty – aware of Leon taking Percival's hand._

_ He heard two words. Gwaine. Dead._

_ The ache was distant, a drop at the edge of his heart, rolling down to join the lake of agony at his core, tiny ripples disturbing the surface – placidity disguising unfathomably black depths._

_ Gwaine might have pestered and bullied and teased and laughed and drank until something spilled forth of that deep undisturbed lake of pain inside him. But Gwaine was gone. Another failure. Killed by Morgana. Another failure. _

_Brought peace at last._

_ He turned to look over his shoulder, past the faces of the people in the empty courtyard, expecting the clatter of hooves at the drawbridge, the golden-haired king's return. Because he never came home without Arthur._

_ Not yet. He waited, watching, until someone took his arm and led him away._

_Then fell on Merlin a great melancholy;_

_He walked with dreams and darkness, and he found_

_A doom that ever poised itself to fall.(1)_

_ He kept his old room, though he'd been offered better quarters by his queen. His own tower, if it pleased him. But he instinctively resisted change, preferring a sanctuary small and familiar and guarded by a fiercely protective dragon of a physician when he needed it._

_ I don't want you to change. I want you always to be you._

_ He tried._

_ He woke. He ate. He exchanged worn clothes for clean ones and washed and shaved. When he remembered. He listened and he responded. He performed duties for Gaius – gathering herbs and mixing recipes and cleaning equipment and fetching and carrying and accompanying and treating and binding and studying. When he remembered. He adapted his duties as manservant to Arthur's wife Queen Guinevere Gwen – carrying laundry and straightening bedclothes and scrubbing floors and supplying food trays and water for drinking and washing and firewood and ink and parchment…_

_ When he remembered._

_ Gaius kept talking about a mourning period. As if it was something that could be gotten over. A time with an end. He found it surprising, a little, the idea of mourning. He was waiting, why couldn't anyone understand that? The point of his life was Arthur._

_ Yes, and Camelot and Guinevere and the knights and Gaius. He made sure, always, that they were safe. But they didn't need him, not in the same way. He didn't need them, not as he needed Arthur._

_ That was what his magic was for, after all._

_ He was aware that Gaius was worried. And Gwen was sweetly troubled, when she was not consumed with the affairs of the kingdom. And Leon and Percival would stop him in the corridors, or approach him at the edge of the training field to speak to him, greet him. Are you all right?_

_ He'd pull his gaze back from a distant edge and realize his hands were empty and he had no purpose there. Or anywhere._

_ He didn't lie anymore. Perhaps that was ironic, but truth or lies didn't matter as time didn't matter. He didn't say I'm fine or I'm all right. He said, I will be. And that was the truth. Someday._

_ The great secret, his greatest fear and his greatest pride, had dissolved like mist in sunlight, or like the falling of dusk to darkness._

_ Magic._

_ It was rumor or it was proclamation, his magic power accomplishment sacrifice salvation. It was free, now. And that was ironic – now that he not longer had any purpose for it, any desire for it, he was free to use magic whenever and wherever and whatever._

_ He did, of course. He did whatever was asked of him by whoever had the courage to ask – the queen going on a diplomatic mission or receiving foreign guests, the knights hunting down a particularly vicious bandit, Gaius researching a curse inflicted on an outlying village. A child in the streets of the lower town, daring to ask for help finding a lost belonging or retrieving a plaything flung and stuck out of reach._

_ He was aware in a vague, detached way that a reputation was building – mystery and power and eccentricity. It amused him because he knew it would amuse Arthur. Someday._

_I walk the maze of moments_

_but everywhere I turn to_

_begins a new beginning_

_but never finds a finish _

_I walk to the horizon_

_and there I find another_

_it all seems so surprising_

_but then I find I know(2)_

_ He found himself in the library, sometimes. He found himself in the kitchen in the forest in the armory in the cells in the prince's room, sometimes, wondering how he'd gotten there or why he'd come, unable to remember why it mattered. But there were no eyebrows raised and no questions asked when he found himself in the library._

_ His reading was erratic and desultory. Without rational intent or planned system. His feet wandered and his hands selected and his eyes read. As he waited._

_ One book, however, drew his attention to a focus. It was an ancient thing, scarcely more than a couple-dozen-page treatise. But the sketch on the cover was a tree so intricate, so alive, it seemed to grow as he gazed on it, to flutter beneath his fingertips, to creak and sigh in the dusty silence of the room._

_ The printed text was small and square in the center of each page, the strokes of the figures impossibly tiny. He thought of Gaius' magnifying disk and took the slender volume with him when he left the library. _

…_..*….._

Awake.

The voice – lady goddess destiny time – invades his consciousness like a drop of water on a still pool. Where he has lain caught petrified preserved in sweet amber opacity. The ripples spread, cross, join, oppose.

Awake.

You must fight again. You must be free. It is the time of the once and future king, again. You are needed. It is TIME.

…..*…..

_ One day, he heard something. In the middle of Are you all right and Why don't you and Shouldn't you and Try not to and Please could you, someone said something different._

_ "Teach me."_

_ He stopped right where he was. Somewhere, going – somewhere. To do something that could – wait._

_ Her hair was golden, thick and long. Her mark of magic was small and dark on the inside of her wrist, the identification of a druid. She looked at him with hope and anticipation and he saw himself in her green eyes. Not a foolish clumsy servant. Not a legendary powerful sorcerer._

_ A man. An ordinary man – with something to offer that was of lasting value to someone. Not tricks or spells for a specific task, there and done. The knowledge of magic, the realm of possibility, seeking and learning. _

_ "Teach me?" she said._

_ And he did. Slowly and sporadically, at first, then with growing confidence and clarity. She didn't question, she didn't criticize, she absorbed and thrilled and glowed._

_ His four friends had reservations at first. For his sake or for his first student's, he didn't know. But it didn't matter anyway, it was a pass-time that held some meaning for someone. Gaius said, it'll be good for him. Guinevere was happy for the proof of open acceptance of druidic peoples. Leon and Percival, he overheard one day, speculated about the involvement of his heart. That amused him also._

…..*…..

It is dark; he cannot see. He cannot move, his limbs are enclosed in a gentle relentless prison. Where he is, he cannot breathe – his respiration is accomplished for him, the benefit of air granted him without its touch on his face, in his lungs.

Fight, he remembers. Yes, he remembers the struggle. For freedom, for escape. His body may be incapable of liberating motion, but his mind and heart and will belong to one who does not easily give up. Had he given up?

Maybe. But now it is time. To fight. His will is energized by the feeling of another's need.

…..*…..

_ "What's this?" she asked one day, moving a stack of larger tomes and uncovering the strange tree-book._

_ Together they studied and examined, her bright gold hair at the edge of his vision as they bent over the pages, her scent fresh wildflowers, her arm and her leg touching his own, so close they were on the bench._

_ He considered the arrangement curiously. He had been touched – embraced, shaken, poked, patted, caressed – by many, since his return. But he hadn't been touched since the king had put his hand in his hair and said, Thank you._

_ "Do you know this language?" she said. "Can you read this?"_

_ Not the text of the book, no. But in the generous margin were scrawled annotations in many hands, comments and corrections and additions and many of these he could decipher._

_ One, in particular, intrigued him. Concerning the memory of trees. The pace of growth, the life chronicled in the rings the whorls the blemishes the eyes… all the imperfections that smoothed made the wood beautiful and interesting. Postulated: that a spell could be devised to enable a sorcerer of considerable power to hear the story of a tree, to understand its history back to roots, through seed or nut to the parent tree, and on and on through time._

_ Trees, it seemed to him, had mastered patience, the art of waiting without pain, the agony of remembrance that so took him by surprise and fractured his days and nights. Of absorbing the worst tragedies and turning them into beauty and strength._

_ It startled him, the longing that struck, to understand just how this was done. It brought tears to his eyes that had not known that extra spillage of moisture since one morning by an empty lake._

_ She was captivated also. Having lost her parents at an early age and raised communally by the druids, she wondered whether such a spell might not work with the body and blood of a human as on the sap and pulp of a tree. To read a person's history, and then step back to read the parents' history – grandparents great – as well._

_ They burned their candles at both ends, researching scrutinizing refining rephrasing. They were short with questions asked of them by friends, they disregarded caution. Because what, after all, was the purpose of life or magic but to answer these vital kinds of question and alleviate the sort of permeating ache that irrevocable loss brought to a person's soul?_

_ "It's ready," she told him finally. "Let's go. It must be tried, it must be tested."_

…..*…..

The thrum of his pulse is not two-fold. Lub-dub. It comes in fours like seasons. Winter-spring. Summer-fall. The flow of life through his being a rhythm more subtle than a beat. A wash, like the moon-pull on tides. He doesn't remember being aware of this before.

His heartbeat quickens, to his perception.

He hears, then, a soft susurration like blood in his veins or a breeze among leaves or gentle waves breaking upon a forerunner's retreat.

The moon upon the ocean

is swept around in motion

but without ever knowing

the reason for its flowing

in motion on the ocean

the moon still keeps on moving

the waves still keep on waving

and I still keep on going (2)

Everything you've done… I know now… for me… for Camelot, for the kingdom you helped me build.

I have been lost, and someone is waiting for me somewhere. Someone needs me.

…..*…..

_ He went, as he went anywhere, without permission, without explanation. He knew the tree, and led her to it. _

_An oak, so hollow, huge and old_

_It looked a tower of ivoried masonwork.(1)_

_ It was an ancient thing, split by lightning in some bygone age, its two halves sundered. How did it grow, how did it thrive, with one half dead and one half alive? Did one half ever stop yearning to be reunited? Did it ever feel itself whole, on its own? Could such a thing be accomplished, in time, or would the waiting extend into eternity?_

_ They arrived after sundown. She advocated the immediate implementation of their researched magic. _

_ No. It was not something to be rushed, hastily, mistakes could be made. He knew she intended to try the spell on herself, to discover her heritage, to learn her parents and family as she had been denied in her young life, but the only magic they would involve themselves with was that specifically to learn this tree. One simply did not experiment with unknown magic on human subjects._

_ He accomplished the campsite – fire, tent, bedroll, wood, seating – while she accomplished their meal, and they ate in a silence companionable as always._

_ But when he stretched himself out in his bedroll at the base of the lightning-cracked tree, she surprised him by stepping close, kneeling beside him, shyly slipping beneath his blanket, beneath his arm. He surprised himself by accepting._

_ Once again, he was curious to note the sensation of touch. Her body was warm and soft, her hair light against his shoulder, her breath warm on his neck and ear. Her hand caressed his chest in an exploring way, warming his blood to life in a way he had thought long gone forever._

_ "Emrys," she said. That was odd, and caught his attention. Though she was a druid, she had never called him that. "It is all your fault, you know. Emrys." Her voice was whisper-soft, brushing sensitive skin. He did not understand her, but it did not seem to matter much._

…..*…..

And if one thing always motivated him, it was a need that he was responsible to fulfill.

The once and future… king.

Determination pushes against his prison. He has nothing else to fight with. But his will – and that call.

Come, the voice says. Calm comfort, reassuring confidence. It is TIME.

…..*…..

_ Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled. That did not matter, he could protect them both from inclemency if need be._

_ She whispered again, and he recognized the words too late. He had not expected a need to counter a sleeping enchantment. _

"_Emrys." He still heard her, as his eyes drifted shut and his limbs dragged to stillness, still felt her hand. "The most powerful. The once foretold, the long awaited. The long… awaited." The voice took on an edge that the hand gently smoothed out. "Waiting be damned. My father and my mother were slaughtered waiting for Emrys. So many were slaughtered waiting for Emrys. I know you know how that feels. Waiting. While people die. Knowing you will never get them back. I curse you, Emrys, do you hear me? Damn you to an eternity of useless tormented waiting!"_

_Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm_

_Of woven paces and of waving hands,_

_And in the hollow oak he lay as dead,_

_And lost to life and use and name and fame.(1)_

_ Lightning cracked, split, healed the oak, sealed away the magic and the man. Time – meaningless cruel impatient endless excruciating – ceased entirely to exist._

_The man so wrought on ever seemed to lie _

_Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower,_

_From which there was no escape for evermore…_

_Then crying, "I have made his glory mine,"_

_And shrieking out, "O, fool!" the harlot leapt_

_Adown the forest, and the thicket closed_

_Behind her, and the forest echoed, "Fool."(1)_

**A/N: I have got to stop telling people, I don't do (fill in the blank). No sooner do I make a claim like, I don't write short stories, inspiration perversely sets out to prove me wrong. I've split this into two chapters, partly for the sake of tension. Partly because of the reason I wrote it at all.**

**I love Tennyson's Idylls of the king (all verses marked "1" are taken from his "Merlin and Vivien") but one of the stories that always bothered me was this one. I have always felt it wrong to end with the wicked witch winning out over mighty Merlin, and him being lost to the world this way. **

**I have also, recently, changed my mind in part about this outcome. That very last scene in ep 5.13, modern Merlin walking the road by Avalon, bothers me in a different way. I can't imagine someone like him living – waiting! – for fifteen hundred years. People – lovely people and fantastic writers – have envisioned different ways to make this 'all right' for him… but it occurred to me, locked in the prison of a cave or tree – **_**if he does not sense time passing at the same rate**_** – might be a blessing in disguise.**

**PS. I had this idea in the back of my mind before reading "The Beguiling of Merlin" by Penelope-Jane-Avalon, which is also an awesome version of this particular legend!**


	2. Chapter 2

**The Memory of Trees**

His prison will not hold him, cannot hold him. It is mindless, his resting place, has no will of its own to oppose him, to hold him. I must be free! he pants to himself, and pushes and pushes…

He is spat forth, tumbling released, rolling stumbling clawing so weakness will not betray him with an involuntary re-submergence in captivity.

He lies exhausted, finally. And can feel again. Feels his limbs trembling with exhaustion, feels his body expand and contract with helpless heaving gulps for air.

Fight, he remembers. It is time; you are needed.

He takes stock of his surroundings; that is only sensible. It is all he is capable of, at the moment.

He is alone; it is dark. He sees stars through dark tossing leaves, hears that wind in the treetops once again. He plans to make his way to a clearing, get his bearings, follow the stars home.

Everything smells wet around him. Wet like rain, like fresh sawdust, like crushed leaves and turned earth. Like worms and lake water. He's soaked through, hair to heels. Shirt and trousers, socks and boots.

There's a twig poking into his back, he finds the strength to shift, feels now the bracken of a forest floor beneath him. A dipping frond tickles his cheek. He breathes and breathes – how long has it been since he's tasted air, used his lungs? Days, maybe?

The air tastes wrong, smells wrong. Thick and heavy, something like smoke, only not so clean. Something like a fish-oil-lamp. Burned last week. In another room.

That call of need stirs at his heart again. His muscles respond and he rolls to place his palms against the damp ground, push himself to his feet. His legs are shaky as a newborn colt's; he feels like he has been treading water all day and through the night.

He stands as still as he can, weaving in place, and closes his eyes. He tests his inner sense of direction, to trust where the draw of home leads him. To find the one who needs him.

There are other sounds now that intrude upon his ears, a rumble like distant thunder, like waterfall. Overhead, though there are no clouds, the sound moves, passes. Another rising falling rushing noise almost like the wind blowing in slowly building and receding gusts. Almost. It sets him on edge, makes him uncomfortable without understanding why. It doesn't belong.

His feet begin to move, slowly and numbly. Wooden and swollen. He stubs his toes on a stone, shuffles a fallen branch. He tilts his head up, searching for a break in the trees where he can study the layout of constellations.

The sound of gusting wind, or large and slow-breaking waves, gets louder before he locates a patch of open sky.

I wonder if the stars sign

the life that is to be mine

and would they let their light shine

enough for me to follow

I look up to the heavens

but night has clouded over

no spark of constellation

no Vela or Orion (2)

But – something is wrong. The stars are wrong, the positions are wrong, as if he is no longer in his own country, but has somehow journeyed afar – though he knows this is impossible. He hasn't moved since entering the rest he didn't choose.

But the stars are wrong.

He looks down, toward the noises. Regular, and rhythmic. That says to him, people. He can ask questions, find his way. Perhaps he needs a little help, before he can help those he was sent and destined to help.

He begins to see light. Lights, moving. Moving fast, like fireballs flung from catapults, but speeding along the ground, neither arcing upward nor falling back to earth. Regular, and controlled. Which says to him, people. Magic, maybe? But nothing he's ever seen before.

He steps forward, and his knee collides sharply with something that rattles. He looks down, feels around with hands, spread fingers. Fence, he guesses. Split-rail. But why here in the middle of the woods? He's fairly familiar with the lands around Camelot, and where he believes himself to be, there are no fences. He must be very lost.

He bends and stuffs himself through the first-highest gap.

The shells upon the warm sands

have taken from their own lands

the echo of their story

but all I hear are low sounds

as pillow words are weaving

and willow wands are leaving

but should I be believing

that I am only dreaming (2)

The approaching-retreating roar is very close, the fire-ball lights, he now realizes, accompanying the sounds. As if maybe a dragon – a small but powerful dragon – could somehow run ten times as fast as a horse, breathing fire. Then turn, somewhere in the near distance, and rush back again, snarling.

But that is illogical.

The hot-oil smell is stronger, too, he almost gags on the thickness of the air.

There is only a small rise, and as he scrambles slowly and clumsily up toward the line – the track the road? – the strange running-dragons seem to follow, back and forth, his boots and his palms tell him of a dry-wash spread of stones and pebbles, leading to – a road. Paved in thick hard black mud. And a stripe painted on the side – yellow or white, he's not sure, in the uncertain light.

He looks up, hearing the growling warning of an approaching dragon – the light, he sees, is split into two round circles. How does a dragon manage that? he wonders, watching it rush toward him. He feels a faint unease, and raises one empty palm as if to give a warning of his own.

The creature squeals, loudly and suddenly, the sound tearing through his chest with the feeling of imminent and violent death. He stumbles back off the thick hard mud, his feet unused to that surface as to the uniform pebbling of the bank sloping from the road, and he sprawls on ass and elbows.

The creature is stopped on the roadway not a dozen paces away, grumbling relentlessly in its throat without need to stop for another breath. The light is not living breathing fire, not flickering torchlight – as if a torch would remain lit at such a speed – but something oddly, disturbingly constant. And painfully bright; he can see nothing else.

The creature gives a soft squeal and he senses movement behind the lights, as if a wing has been extended – that is backwards, he think in confusion, it should extend for flight, and tuck down when at rest. He can make out shadow-shapes, head and shoulders, maybe.

"What the hell are you doing, walking on the –"

He knows that voice. Recognizes the need shared. He trembles at the knowledge. It is time. He is home.

To leave the thread of all time

and let it make a dark line

in hopes that I can still find

the way back to the moment

I took the turn and turned to

begin a new beginning

still looking for the answer

I cannot find the finish (2)

"Oh, hell. Oh, damn. _Merlin_?"

"Arthur," he croaks. Remaining upright is a struggle.

The shadow-shapes rush out from behind the wing, the lights. Arthur moves too fast; Merlin is nauseatingly dizzy.

"Oh, Merlin, where have you _been_?" Arthur kneels next to him, gathering Merlin into his arms, into his lap. "We've been _waiting_! We've been _looking_ for you!"

"You're back." He persuades his nerveless hands to move, to grasp his king's clothing, his shirt a strange thin stretchy thing with sleeves that stopped at the middle of Arthur's bicep muscle.

The creature makes another soft squealing sound without interrupting the constant growling. Arthur pays it no attention; if he's not worried, Merlin's safe.

"Is it really him?" He knows that voice too. "Arthur? Is it Merlin?"

"My lady," he manages to gasp, twisting his body in the gravel as she rushes from behind the second light. She is wearing a shirt similar to Arthur's – and trousers that hug her like a second skin. She kneels beside him also, brushing at his shirt, his hair. Concern shines with the tears in her eyes. Concern pulls Arthur's sarcastic grin sideways.

"Just Gwen," she says. "Really, Merlin. What – what happened to you? Are you all right?"

He realizes he's clinging to Arthur like he's the one dying, but he can't make his fingers let go. He remembers all too well having to let go of the side of the wooden boat.

"I did it," he tells Arthur. "I tried my best. Your last order, sire… Arthur." He chokes, he hasn't said that name in so long. "You told me, never change." He can feel tears running down his face and it doesn't matter.

"Hell, Merlin, when I said that, I didn't mean your clothes, idiot," Arthur teases, though the worry-frown deepens. He grabs a handful of Merlin's sleeve. "Where'd you find stuff like this, anyway? A costume shop? Please don't tell me you had it made, did you?"

Arthur's words don't make sense to him. His clothes are normal. Theirs are strange, the stars are strange – the damn dragon-creature glaring without blinking or moving its wings or taking a damn breath was strange!

He looks at Gwen, sees that her curly hair is short, no longer than her ears, and that she has a whole row of tiny earrings in the side of her ear.

A question hits him like a wagonload of bricks. How long was he gone?

It's either this or that way

its one way or the other

it should be one direction

it could be on reflection (2)

"Arthur, I think –" Gwen hesitates, sets her jaw in worried determination. "Merlin. Two years after Arthur died –" behind and beneath him, Arthur stirs in discomfort; Merlin's fingers tighten – "you disappeared from Camelot. Can you tell me where you went, what happened to you?"

He opens his mouth, no words come out. He shakes his head stupidly and scrubs one sleeve over his eyes.

Gwen glances at Arthur, over his head. "Merlin, where were you born, what are your parents' names, where do you live? What year is it?"

His mouth and throat dry, he rasps, "I was born in Ealdor – you've both been there with me. You know my mother. I live in Camelot with Gaius, and – _what year is it_?"

Tears are streaming down Gwen's face. She shakes her head and covers her mouth, looking once again over his head at Arthur.

"Never mind, Merlin," the king says soothingly, releasing his grip to wrap his arms completely and comfortably around him. "Never mind. We're together now – we'll get you to Gaius; he doesn't live far. Gwen, you okay to drive?"

"Yeah," she says. She gulps and smiles and swipes at her tears. "Yeah." Her voice is stronger, determined, just like the woman who ruled a kingdom a young widow.

"You needed me," Merlin says upward toward Arthur's jawline, relaxing. Absolutely relishing the feel of the king's chest against his back, the breathing steady and strong, as if it could last forever. As if they both could last forever. "You needed me, so I came."

"Yeah, I needed you, idiot," Arthur tells him, and though he's still smiling that familiar lopsided smile, a tear escapes the corner of the king's blue eye. "We all need you. And we're there for you too, you hear me?"

The turn I have just taken

the turn that I was making

I might be just beginning

I might be near the end (2)

He's exhausted. He feels his mind relaxing as his body does, knowing that his friends will care for him until he feels better. Until he understands. "Stay with me?" he mumbles.

Arthur makes a choking sound that could be laugh or sob. "Always. You're going to be all right, Merlin. You'll be all right."

"No," he says, and feels a smile stretch from his heart to his face. "I _am_ all right."

**A/N: (1) – Verses taken from Tennyson's "Merlin and Vivien". (2) – Verses and title taken from Enya's "The Memory of Trees".**

**Also, just as a qualifier, this story is complete as is. You the reader can decide how many of the original cast and crew would be reincarnated, what the reason for the king's return is. I've already written something like this (A Once and Future Destiny et al.) so I won't be repeating myself by continuing this. And it's been done and done to write Arthur's return and the acclimation of a medieval man to the wonders of modern technology, so I didn't want to get too far into that. Just a hint. I think Merlin would adapt far more readily to such a circumstance, in any case. I anticipate the question, what about his magic. It's there, don't worry… our favorite warlock will be in peak condition, mentally and physically, eventually. :D Thanks for reading!**

**PS. For readers of The More Things Change, I took a bit of a break over the holiday weekend (Independence Day, here in the States) but I will be returning to that with another chapter in the next few days. In the meantime, here's this!**


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